nish their cupboards with
plate, their joined beds with tapestry and silk hangings, and their tables
with carpets and fine napery, whereby the wealth of our country (God be
praised therefore, and give us grace to employ it well) doth infinitely
appear. Neither do I speak this in reproach of any man, God is my judge,
but to shew that I do rejoice rather to see how God hath blessed us with
his good gifts; and whilst, I behold how (in a time wherein all things are
grown to most excessive prices, and what commodity so ever is to be had is
daily plucked from the communalty by such as look into every trade) we do
yet find the means to obtain and achieve such furniture as heretofore hath
been unpossible.

There are old men yet dwelling in the village where I remain which have
noted three things to be marvellously altered in England within their
sound remembrance, and other three things too much increased.

One is the multitude of chimneys lately erected, whereas in their young
days there were not above two or three, if so many, in most uplandish
towns of the realm (the religious houses and manor places of their lords
always excepted, and peradventure some great personages), but each one
made his fire against a reredos in the hall, where he dined and dressed
his meat.

The second is the great (although not general) amendment of lodging; for,
said they, our fathers, yea and we ourselves also, have lain full oft upon
straw pallets, on rough mats covered only with a sheet, under coverlets
made of dagswain or hopharlots (I use their own terms), and a good round
log under their heads instead of a bolster or pillow. If it were so that
our fathers--or the good man of the house had within seven years after his
marriage purchased a mattress or flock bed, and thereto a stack of chaff
to rest his head upon, he thought himself to be as well lodged as the lord
of the town, that peradventure lay seldom in a bed of down or whole
feathers, so well were they content, and with such base kind of furniture:
which also is not very much amended as yet in some parts of Bedfordshire,
and elsewhere, further off from our southern parts. Pillows (said they)
were thought meet only for women in childbed. As for servants, if they had
any sheet above them, it was well, for seldom had they any under their
bodies to keep them from the pricking straws that ran oft through the
canvas of the pallet and rased their hardened hides.

The third thing they tell of